Friday, August 3, 2018

Baltimore City Council to pass resolution on Hiroshima Day calling for Nuclear Disarmament

Prevent Nuclear War Maryland, 325 E. 25th Street,
Baltimore, MD 21218

CONTACT:
Max
Obuszewski at 727-256-5789 or 410-323-1607 or mobuszewski2001 at Comcast dot
net

Baltimore City Council to pass resolution on Hiroshima Day calling
for Nuclear Disarmament

PRESS
RELEASE-FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August
3, 2018

WHO:Prevent Nuclear War Maryland is a
group of
Marylanders working to reduce the threat of nuclear war by organizing a
groundswell of Maryland citizens and organizations to support 1) the national
Back From the Brink Call to Prevent Nuclear War and 2) similar
resolutions at the state and local government levels.

WHAT:Members of
Prevent Nuclear War Maryland met with Baltimore City Council members Bill Henry
[District # 4] and Mary Pat Clarke [District # 13], and the councilmembers
agreed to introduce a Back From the Brink resolution on behalf of Chesapeake
Physicians for Social Responsibility. This “Call to Prevent Nuclear War” is a grassroots campaign
seeking to fundamentally change U.S. nuclear weapons policy and lead us away
from the nuclear precipice. The
Call lays out five common-sense steps that the United States should take to
reform its nuclear policy: 1-Renouncing the option of using nuclear
weapons first; 2-Ending the sole, unchecked authority of any U.S. president to
launch a nuclear attack; 3-Taking U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert;4-Cancelling the plan to replace its entire nuclear arsenal
with enhanced weapons: and 5-Actively pursuing a verifiable agreement among
nuclear-armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.

Baltimore would be the first major
city in the United States to sign on to Back From the Brink, joining eleven small cities and
towns in Massachusetts and Ojai, California.
Council Resolution Request for Federal Action – Move Back From the Brink and
Toward Nuclear Disarmament is expected to pass.

WHY:It is
appropriate and symbolic that the resolution will pass in August 6. In
1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of
Hiroshima. Three days later, the US dropped a plutonium bomb on the port
city of Nagasaki.

Over the
next 30 years, the U.S. intends to spend $1.2 trillion to refurbish its nuclear
arsenal and create lower-yield weapons which could increase the likelihood they
may be used. The Council’s resolution breaks down the cost to
taxpayers: “Whereas just in the past year, Baltimoreans averaged $175 per
capita for a ‘nuclear weapons war tax’ paying a collective “$107.5 million in
federal taxes toward the cost of producing, deploying and maintaining nuclear
weapons. Marylanders as a whole averaged $244 per capita, with the state
collectively paying an estimated $1.45 billion in 2017 federal taxes toward our
country’s cost of nuclear weapons.”

Councilperson Henry
makes the connection by quoting Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. who said “'A
nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense
than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.'” He added,
“We need to invest more of our resources in ourselves and in our children,
striving for a future in which our efforts towards building a stronger society
are no longer diminished by our efforts to mutually assure our own
destruction."Back From
the Brink is a reminder
that spending billions of tax dollars on revamping the
nuclear arsenal is an affront to the needs of
the people.

On July
7, 2017 the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) was adopted by 122
countries at the United Nations. While the United States was not
a signatory, our government must be pressured as the best way toreduce the risk of
nuclear war will require the abolition of nuclear
weapons.